ed serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long,
tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment."

"A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he ventured. Then
he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel Rudyard Byng?"

She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng."

"Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big
B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship--they
told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a
mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana
Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely--just like the 4.7's flay the
kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long
way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all right
to us."

"Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression lifting.

He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia
onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was
both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal leash,
so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, shearing
and sun-downing--all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit o' luck
and found a mob of warrigals--horses run wild, you know. We stalked 'em
for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got 'em, and coaxed
'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and with the hard tin
shipped for to see the world. So it was as of old. And by and by we
found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, puttin' in a bit o'
time for the Flag."

Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many
friends in the past--a smile none the less alluring because it had lost
that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, had
been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight drooping of
the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and natural.

"It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the
world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where
life is so simple and so large."

His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he said
to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But he felt
too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give it--a
friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so simple
and so large."

"Well, that might be so 'long